Tag Archives: Steampunk

I’ve neglected this blog over the summer. This is partly because of my day job (the one that actually pays the bills, not the one I wish paid the bills), and partly because the UK had its best summer for seven years. Day after day of glorious sunshine and high temperatures, something our vitamin D-starved bodies couldn’t get enough of. Normal weather service has now resumed, so perhaps I’ll finally get more chapters written.

I’d not planned this blog post, but yesterday – in the serendipitous way that so often happens with writing – Twitter handed it to me on a plate. As part of the above-mentioned job I’m planning a series of short story writing activities, and for various reasons, needed a list of contemporary YA must-read gothic and steampunk novels.

Being a big fan of Victorian gothic novels (have I ever mentioned that I read Wuthering Heights at least once a year?) I wouldn’t have found it hard to make a list of classics, but when it came to modern fiction I wasn’t even sure if Twilight counted as gothic. Moreover, I confess (and this may lose me some followers): I have never knowingly chosen to read a steampunk novel. This is for no better reason than taste – I’m not a big fan of sci-fi, and (I’m generalising here) many novels that would be classified as steampunk also fall into that category, so I don’t tend to pick them up. The obvious exception is Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials trilogy, but I didn’t even know steampunk was a ‘thing’ when I read that.

I like to think I’ve got a good background knowledge of YA novels, but there’s nothing like a subculture to banish smug assumptions. I couldn’t name one steampunk novel (although a quick Google search did throw up a few that I’d actually heard of), and I only had a vague afterthought that Jules Verne and HG Wells might come into the category as forefathers. I didn’t want to randomly pick titles from a search engine – I wanted personal recommendations. So I asked the expert: Twitter. That is, I cheekily asked a few authors if they would retweet my request to their followers, which they kindly did.*

Within minutes, a whole airship-full of suggestions came steaming into my Twitter feed from librarians, writers and YA writing fans. I’ve never seen such passion and enthusiasm in 140 characters. I Googled every one, and made a selection from the most mentioned, the most appropriate-looking and the ones I most liked the look of. Then I blithely tweeted that I now had the definitive, hand-picked list of gothic and steampunk novels for young adults.

At this, Melvin Burgess (she types, breezily, as if his Junk isn’t one of my most admired YA novels of all time) asked if I could share. So here’s the list. Of course, fans of steampunk will argue that it isn’t definitive, and I’ve only read a small number so can’t vouch personally for most of them, but it’s been a lot of fun putting the list together. Best of all I have had my mind well and truly opened to the smoking chimneys and clanking cogs of steampunk, and can’t wait to get reading.

Modern gothic

Twilight by Stephanie Meyer

Beautiful Creatures by Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl

Coraline by Neil Gaiman

Dreaming of Amelia (The Ghosts of Ashbury High in the US) by Jaclyn Moriarty

Black Spring by Alison Croggon

The Madman’s Daughter by Megan Sheppard

Ashes on the Waves by Mary Lindsey

Unspoken (The Lynburn Trilogy) by Sarah Rees Brennan

My Swordhand is Singing by Marcus Sedgwick

Heap House by Edward Carey (which was only published last week! Talk about an exclusive…)

The Haunting of Alaizabel Cray by Chris Wooding (looks like a good example of gothic/steampunk crossover)

A very personal journey on the writing road, one day at a time… what shoes should I wear? I set up this blog to empty my head of all the useless, words and thoughts clogging up my mind during the day. The hope is that I will be left with just the good stuff to include in the narrative of my first work of fiction - a sci-fi novel. Or it could be just another distraction…